America's happiness crisis is a generational divide

[marmar]

America's happiness crisis is a generational divide
The U.S. falls to its lowest rank ever in the 2025 World Happiness Report

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published April 14, 2025 7:39AM (EDT)


(Salon) The American people are very unhappy. The Age of Trump and the rise of authoritarian populism in the MAGA movement are both the symptom and the cause of this collective unhappiness. The unhappiness and rage that the American people feel toward the system and the elites put Trump back in power.

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This year’s report provides the following insights about the connections between unhappiness and America’s democracy crisis:

The sharp drop in social trust in the US is consistent with the fact that rising unhappiness has shifted voters almost exclusively towards the populist right (Donald Trump), and not towards the left (Bernie Sanders). The relative decline or stability in social trust in Europe is consistent with the fact that the decline in life satisfaction has split the unsatisfied electorate between the two opposite extremes of the political spectrum, depending on their level of social trust. …

In Europe, citizens with low life satisfaction and low social trust, the ‘anomics’, tend to vote for far-right parties. In the context of the US two-party system, they tend to abstain and withdraw from public life.

The fall in life satisfaction cannot be explained by economic growth, at least not by average national income, as GDP per capita has been on the rise in the US and Western Europe since the mid-2000s. Rather, it could be blamed on the feelings of financial insecurity and loneliness experienced by Americans and Europeans – two symptoms of a damaged social fabric. It is driven by almost all social categories, but in particular, by the rural, the less-educated, and, quite strikingly, by the younger generation. This low level of life satisfaction is a breeding ground for populism and the lack of social trust is behind the political success of the far right.

America’s young people are in a state of despair. If Americans 29 years old and younger were their own country, they would rank 62nd in the world for happiness. The 2025 World Happiness Report explains:

Young adults across the globe face increasing mental health challenges. Once considered one of the happiest phases of life, young adulthood has taken a troubling turn. Young people in North America and Western Europe now report the lowest wellbeing among all age groups. In fact, World Happiness Report 2024 found that the fall in the United States’ happiness ranking was largely due to a precipitous decline in wellbeing among Americans under 30….

Despite the overall trend that young adults report higher social connection than older adults, countries vary on the age-related differences in the quantity of social connection. For example, this pattern is flipped in the United States, Japan, and Australia, where young adults report the lowest social connection among all age groups. In the United States, 18% of young adults (aged 18–29) reported not having anyone that they feel close to, whereas 15% of adults aged 30–44 reported no social connection.

Unlike other nations, young adults in the US also report lower quality of connection than other age groups. Mirroring these patterns, World Happiness Report 2024 also highlighted a decline in the US happiness ranking, largely driven by a drop in wellbeing in the young adult age group. Although not definitive, this provides intriguing preliminary evidence that relatively low connection among young people might factor into low wellbeing among young Americans.

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I recently spoke with Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, the Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre and Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the Saïd Business School at Oxford. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve is also Editor of the World Happiness Report and the co-founder of the World Wellbeing Movement, a coalition of exemplary corporations that help put wellbeing metrics at the heart of business and public policy. He warns that America’s young people are experiencing the equivalent of a midlife crisis and that this will likely mean diminished incomes and wealth, lower social mobility and a lack of overall happiness and sense of well-being as they age, which will potentially cause serious harm to American society in the future.

....(snip)....

Is America happy right now?

No.

The average level of life satisfaction in America is lower than seven out of 10 — and that's just an average that hides a huge amount of variation. There are people in America who report feeling very happy or satisfied with their lives, and then there are a whole lot of people, and increasingly more, who are telling us that they're not satisfied with their lives. In this year's World Happiness Report, the United States ranks 24th. The United States fell out of the top twenty in 2024. The decline in well-being in the U.S. is most pronounced among young people who are younger than 30. If they were studied in isolation, they would only be the 62nd most unhappy country in the world. Americans who are 60 years old and up are much happier and would be in the top 10 if they were their own country. In all, Americans are becoming less and less happy and that is being driven by young people falling off of the proverbial and metaphorical cliff in terms of satisfaction and happiness with their lives. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/04/14/americas-happiness-is-a-generational-divide/

[Irish_Dem]

1. This has been the GOP goal for a long time now.

Making Americans unhappy enables the fascist rise to power.